Pruitt must go

Thursday

Apr 19, 2018 at 12:01 AM

Scott Pruitt’s real scandal is his regressive record as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, where he has done his best to act as a one-man wrecking ball to demolish regulations that protect the nation’s air, land and water. Compared to that performance, the mushrooming set of scandals involving his perquisites and finances are small-time stuff. Still, Pruitt’s ethics problems are what have gotten him into trouble and promise to keep him there. Pruitt should step down, and spare President Trump from having to fire him.

The list of alleged and admitted acts of unethical behavior is long. Best known is Pruitt’s having accepted discounted lodging in Washington, D.C., in a condo co-owned by the wife of a lobbyist with an interest in EPA actions. The best fodder for cartoonists has been his installation of a soundproof phone both in his office at a cost of $43,000, which the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said this week violated laws requiring that such expenditures be reported to Congress.

Then there’s Pruitt’s $3-million-a-year, 24-hour-a-day security detail. His insistence on flying first class, citing security concerns that his bodyguards apparently could not address. His request that the first-class flights be booked on Delta Airlines so that he could accumulate frequent-flyer miles. His frequent trips to his home state of Oklahoma at public expense. His use of lights and sirens to clear traffic while on his way to a restaurant. Pruitt has hired his banker to run the Superfund program, allowed aides to keep second jobs as political consultants and skirted regulations to hand big raises to favored aides.

None of this does as much damage to the country as Pruitt’s attempts to rescind or loosen health, safety and energy-efficiency regulations for the benefit of the fossil fuel, chemical and agricultural industries. Many of these attempts have been blocked by the courts or by Congress, but even so, Pruitt has been one of the most productive members of the Trump administration, busily rolling back the clock while Americans are distracted by Russian election meddling and adult-film stars.

Pruitt should never have been made head of the EPA. Now, a tangle of ethics scandals offers the best hope of preventing him from causing further damage. He should resign.

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